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Assorted Thursday links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. Why did Bitcoin take so long?  And is it ugly?

2. Cashless restaurants in NYC (NYT).

3. “...infants who look like their father at birth are healthier one year later. The reason is such father–child resemblance induces a father to spend more time engaged in positive parenting.”  If looks could kill…

4. Are wealthier millionaires happier?

5. “Therefore the expected years of life lost for a single birth cohort due to the changes in death rates from 2015 to 2016 was larger than the years of life lost by Americans in the Iraq war.”

6. Does faculty tweeting help the reputation of universities?

How to think about 2018 — predictions for the year to come

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one bit:

The onset of a new year brings plenty of predictions, and so I will hazard one: Many of the biggest events of 2018 will be bound together by a common theme, namely the collision of the virtual internet with the real “flesh and blood” world. This integration is likely to steer our daily lives, our economy, and maybe even politics to an unprecedented degree.

For instance, the coming year will see a major expansion of the “internet of things”…

And:

But whatever your prediction for the future, this integration of real and virtual worlds will either make or break bitcoin and other crypto-assets.

And:

So far the process-oriented and Twitter-oriented foreign policies have coexisted, however uneasily. I see 2018 as the year where these two foreign policies converge in some manner. Either Trump’s tweets end up driving actual foreign policy and its concrete, “boots on the ground” realization, or the real-world policy prevails and the tweets become far less relevant.

There is much more at the link, including a discussion of cyberwar,  China and facial surveillance technologies, and the French attempt to ban smartphones at schools.

How to understand modern India

by  Tyler Cowen in

I could just rewrite my post How to understand modern China, but change the examples.  But you can do that mental exercise yourself, and besides it is easier to access information about India in the English language.  So let me try a very specific recommendation for India:

Study Indian textiles and their history

I  found this the single most useful way to get a handle on Indian history, a bit less on contemporary India.  Here’s why:

1. The artistic side of textile history gives you a clear sense of regional differences, and also Islamic influence, or lack thereof.

2.. It focuses your attention rather immediately on the role of women and women’s work, and also how this interacted with industrialization.

3. In the early 18th century, India was a world leader at cloth production, but it lost this position by the early 19th century.  Studying textiles and cloth production offers an excellent window on their major story of economic decline, and how British import penetration, backed by colonialism, contributed to Indian deindustrialization.

4. Relatively poor and neglected regions of India, such as Bihar and Orissa, have a strong presence in Indian folk textile traditions, and you will learn plenty about them.

5. Books on textiles will explain the accompanying information about Indian history in a clearer way than will actual history books about India.

6. People who write books on textiles tend to be both clear and careful I have found, perhaps because they love and collect something delicate.

7. Studying textiles and cloth also brings you right to Gandhi’s “Swadeshi’ movement.

8. Unless your income is really quite modest, you can afford to buy and regularly view some pretty high-quality Indian textiles.  In India I’ve found some excellent pieces for as cheap as $200-$250.

9. Studying textiles also will bring to your attention India’s tribes and indigenous peoples.  And it ties in readily to India’s broader cultural influence throughout Southeast Asia.

10. Textile books have many pretty pictures.

My favorite books on Indian textiles are cited in my discussion of that topic in Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World’s Cultures.  But it’s more a question of reading a bunch of them, rather than picking out a select few.  Simple, direct searches will get you to where you need to go.

My favorite collection of Indian textiles is in the Victoria & Albert museum in London.  Sadly, I’ve yet to get to the Calico textiles museum in Ahmedabad, though it is very highly regarded.

Christmas assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. Google Maps moat.

2. On family estrangements (NYT).

3. Interview with Sujatha Gidla about the reception of her book in India.

4. Elad Blog on Bitcoin network effects.

5. “Among the allegations against UI physics professor Michael Flatté is that he spent more than $8,000 in UI resources on robots “to teach classes, supervise assistants, and attend meetings while he was out of the country or attending conferences.”” Link here.

6. “If only we could find a Sufi master to humble us a bit.“

Sunday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. Exposure to news about fracking booms increases economic migration to booming areas.

2. Derek Parfit’s photographs.

3. “Homes exposed to sea level rise (SLR) sell at a 7% discount relative to observably equivalent unexposed properties equidistant from the beach.”

4. “We find no evidence of public market myopia when matching by initial conditions.”

5. NYT praises William James.

6. Does higher social class undermine wise reasoning about personal affairs?

Additions to my best books of the year list

by  Tyler Cowen

Since my longer, full list (and for fiction), more has come out, or I have become aware of some omissions, listed here:

The Valmiki Ramayana, translated by Bibek Debroy.  I have only browsed this so far, but it is definitely worthy of mention.

Peter Guardino, Dead March: History of the Mexican-American War.  The link brings you to my commentary.

Samanta Schweblin, Fever Dream: A Novel, [Distancia de Rescate].

Navid Kermani, Wonder Beyond Belief: On Christianity.  My review is behind the link.

Claire Tomalin, A Life of My Own.  Ditto, a real favorite.

Robin Hanson and Kevin Simler, The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life.  At first this was slated for my 2018 list, but it turns out the Kindle edition is out now, so it gets to make both lists.

The New Testament, translated by David Bentley Hart.

Homer, The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson.  I haven’t read this yet, but it is getting consistently rave reviews.

Karl Sigmund, Exact Thinking in Demented Times.  Again, a review is behind the link.

Favorite jazz from 2017

by  Tyler Cowen in

Charles Lloyd New Quartet, Passin’ Thru.  If their last few albums were released during the golden age of jazz, they would be revered to this day.

Cecile McLorin Salvant, Dreams and Daggers.  The new Ella Fitzgerald.

Alexandre Tharaud, Hommage a’ Barbara, classical pianist goes the route of French song, wonderful acoustics to these arrangements.

Django Bates, Saluting Sgt. Pepper.  A German (!) big band redoes the whole album, with a semi-comic music hall feel, intricate horn arrangements, works surprisingly well.

Mulatu of Ethiopia, the title says it all.

Runners-up might be Steve Coleman, Nicole Mitchell, Matt Mitchell, Tyshawn Sorey, Craig Taborn, Rez Abbasi, and Vijay Iyer, but I’m not sure I’ll go back to those in the longer run.

Favorite world music 2017

by  Tyler Cowen in

Danyèl Waro, Monmon.  From the Reunion Islands, sample.

Residente, album is called Residente, Puerto Rican rap/reggaeton roots, but spreading out through diverse styles.

The Secret Ensemble, Call of the Birds, Turkish with classical roots, teaser here.  Passionate stuff.

Minore Manes: Rebetika Songs, from Smyrna.

Sahra Halgan Trio, Faransiskiyo, Somaliland.  Try this.

Duo Sabil, Zabad, oud and percussion.  Here is one cut.

Try this music video by Afro-Haitian Experimental Orchestra.

If you insist on something Brazilian, we can go back a year and pull out Sociedade Recreativa.

Were U.S. nuclear tests more harmful than we had thought?

by  Tyler Cowen in

So says Keith A. Meyers, job candidate from University of Arizona.  I found this to be a startling result, taken from his secondary paper:

During the Cold War the United States detonated hundreds of atomic weapons at the Nevada Test Site. Many of these nuclear tests were conducted above ground and released tremendous amounts of radioactive pollution into the environment. This paper combines a novel dataset measuring annual county level fallout patterns for the continental U.S. with vital statistics records. I find that fallout from nuclear testing led to persistent and substantial increases in overall mortality for large portions of the country. The cumulative number of excess deaths attributable to these tests is comparable to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Basically he combines mortality estimates with measures of Iodine-131 concentrations in locally produced milk, “to provide a more precise estimate of human exposure to fallout than previous studies.” The most significant effects are in the Great Plains and Central Northwest of America, and “Back-of-the-envelope estimates suggest that fallout from nuclear testing contributed between 340,000 to 460,000 excess deaths from 1951 to 1973.”

His primary job market paper is on damage to agriculture from nuclear testing.

Wednesday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. Trouble in Peru (NYT).

2. The wisdom of polarized crowds (pdf).

3. The year of Ben Stratechery.

4. Big advance in text-to-speech technology, the remaining blips: “For example, our system has difficulties pronouncing complex words (such as “decorum” and “merlot”), and in extreme cases it can even randomly generate strange noises.”

5. I just pre-ordered the new Edward Tenner book, due out in April.

6. 2017 in architecture (uneven, the reality and the piece).

7. Most-read articles of the year, few are about DT.